


this just ain't living

by heavydiirtysoul



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: All My Sons, Angst, Arthur Miller - Freeform, Cancer, M/M, Mentions of Cancer, Song fic, cancer cover, i hurt myself okay, josh is a nurse and tyler is his patient, joshler - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-14
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-08-15 02:23:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8038501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavydiirtysoul/pseuds/heavydiirtysoul
Summary: Prompt: Tyler is dying of cancer, and he doesn’t have much time left. Josh is a nurse that keeps visiting him in the evenings to read to him. As Tyler is getting worse, they start on their last book - All My Sons by Arthur Miller.





	this just ain't living

Most days, it’s hard to open his eyes.

There’s no air around him, just a thick blanket heavy like a lead weight, and every breath creaks in his lungs, a pitiful, broken rattle.

His voice is rough and lifeless if he manages to force out a few words.

Josh’s voice however is different. It’s warm and soft like honey in the sun, like a late summer night back when the world was still a colorful place and not an almost empty hospital room with white floors, white walls, white neon lights, white and cold as an icy winter. He shivers in the bleakness that isn’t even real.

And so he sinks into the melodies falling from Josh’s lips, and the words seldom make sense to him, but the voice seeps into his weak heart and warms it from the inside, and he sighs with relief, even if it’s just a small one and it doesn’t hold on for long.

The words are an endless river of comforting hums, only few sentences stick out of the stream.

“I don’t know why it is, but every time I reach out for something I want, I have to pull back because other people will suffer. My whole bloody life, time after time after time.” 

An echo in the empty space around him, and he can feel his heart skip a beat. He knows those words.

“There are certain men in the world who rather see everybody hung before they’ll take blame.”

He smiles. It’s not a story to smile to, but he does anyways, because he’s too tired to care. Drawing in a deep, painful breath, he almost chokes on the quote he needs to say out loud, a small, hoarse voice stumbling onto the bedsheets and into the void.

“You - you want to live?”

Tyler swallows hard, coughs, but he keeps going, willing to move a mountain if necessary. He needs to say it. One more time.

“You better… better figure out your –hng– … life.”

The words are coarse and rough, and Tyler’s smile flickers and fades, and Josh’s voice lulls him into his last night.

**Author's Note:**

> i am sorry
> 
> prompt me @badkittyjosh on tumblr!!


End file.
